Karl Ferdinand von Gräfe

Karl Ferdinand von Gräfe (1787-1840) was a German surgeon and eye specialist, born in Warsaw to a family of Saxon descent and active for most of his career in Berlin. He studied medicine at Dresden, Halle and Leipzig and took his doctorate in Leipzig in 1804. After a spell as court physician in Ballenstedt he was called in 1810 to the newly founded University of Berlin, where he held the chair of surgery until his death. Contemporaries valued him as a brilliant operator. He designed a number of surgical apparatus and eye instruments, and he is credited with the first suture of the soft palate in Germany, the first partial resection of the lower jaw and the first ligature of the innominate artery. His revival of rhinoplasty, the reconstruction of a lost nose, earned him the title father of modern plastic surgery. From 1822 he served as third surgeon general of the Prussian army, partly in recognition of his work for military hospitals in the wars of liberation. He died suddenly in Hannover, where he had been summoned to operate on the crown prince in an attempt to save his sight.